"Again my point was just that there is some ambiguity in attempts to indicate resolution by a single sensor spec." - absolutely, which is why we've often posted MTF plots to tell a better picture of what is going on.

That is great, I had not come across those ... can you post links for the current models? I do not think anyone will accuse you of crossing the line into advertising if you do that in response to a question. And update us with RED Dragon MTF links when available, please.

The plots are buried in the depths of Reduser somewhere. I recently did some Epic MTF plots, but I've not had them published yet so we'll see what happens now that the chaos of NAB is over. I'll post back over here when they're available.

(Me, marketing, never! I just love to talk tech and talk to people who make great images.)

b) Canon's idea is reasonable enough, but if you were to take their sensor data (as you'll soon be able to do with the C500) and properly demosaic then properly downsample to 1080p you'll get a better looking result. I've done that exact experiment with RED data to confirm how that demosiac arrangement works. In other words, there are better ways to decode that raw sensor data, but they're more expensive to implement (in terms of processing power, heat, weight etc.)

That's fascinating, Graeme!

Do you have any mathematical insight as to where the gains come from? Naively looking at the information one might guess that 1920 x 1080 4:4:4 derived from a sensor with RGGB blocks ought to do as well as anything else. Is it the anti-aliasing optical filter you have to have? I guess with that scheme you are fighting the need to anti-alias the red and the blue twice as much as the green, so maybe you lose out on the green resolution you could have had if you'd done the deBayer to a 4 pixel block then downsample. So I could see that maybe if you are using a more sophisticated algorithm doing some sort of deconvolution over multiple pixels, you might win if you do the deBayer first?

It has always bothered me that I don't really understand why perceived sharpness and detail are so much better if you start from a very highly oversampled sensor. The artistic side of me absolutely knows that a 5D mark 2 shot downsampled to web-friendly 1280 pixels looks crisper and sharper and more detailed than a 5D mark 1 shot with the same lens, but the physicist wonders how there can be much of a difference when both are downsampling so dramatically. I also noticed that doing an unsharp mask before downsampling, and again if necessary at output, gives a more natural crisp result than doing it just once as the final step at output resolution (which used to be the conventional wisdom).

There's no denying that footage from my Scarlet looks utterly, utterly fabulous downsampled to 720p, compared with footage from my AF100 downsampled from 1080p to 720p. Oversampling *REALLY*, *REALLY* helps and oversampling a lot seems much better than oversampling a little. I just wish I understood where these perceived gains are coming from physically!

and make one RGB pixel out of it, if you don't apply any filtering in the process (so just "binning", and averaging the greens) the green value's spatial location is centred on the quad and the red and blue values are offset half a diagonal pixel. This will induce some mild colouration on sharp edges. The averaging of the greens is a very mild filter and helps very slightly with aliasing, but not much. Remember downsampling is a sampling process, so adequate filtering is needed.

When you do a full demosaic to RGB, you're now in the position where you can apply a proper filter before downsampling, which will lead you to a more co-sited RGB result (vastly reduced colour fringing on sharp edges) and a sharper image with less aliasing.

There's too many factors in play to properly figure why your downsampling example is different.

(snip) the green value's spatial location is centred on the quad and the red and blue values are offset half a diagonal pixel. This will induce some mild colouration on sharp edges. The averaging of the greens is a very mild filter and helps very slightly with aliasing, but not much. Remember downsampling is a sampling process, so adequate filtering is needed.

When you do a full demosaic to RGB, you're now in the position where you can apply a proper filter before downsampling, which will lead you to a more co-sited RGB result (vastly reduced colour fringing on sharp edges) and a sharper image with less aliasing.

Ahhhh, smart. Thank you! I hadn't been thinking of it in terms needing co-sited results. Of course that makes sense. You have three sampled monochrome images slightly offset from each other, so handling that offset as well as you can is vital when you downsample. Then it makes sense that you can do a better job of that by deBayering to full resolution with a good algorithm before you downsample.

I'll be slightly less impatient with my Mac as it chugs through my R3Ds at full deBayer now :-)

(I know, I know, I should get a RED Rocket. I fully intend to purchase one when the money comes in from selling the first shorts shot with my Scarlet! It's bearable with CPU renders while I sleep for the moment… )

Sorry to take the subject off the rgbg discussion, but since you have RED's ear, a few suggestions and comments on the Scarlet, after using it for 4 weeks straight.

Good.

1. 6k upgrade. Though I don't know what I'l do with it, I'm sure it will be a better sensor. Thanks.

2. Scarlet form factor. Complicated, but nice weight, works with just about everything, hand held, stedicam, sticks, crane. Once again Thanks.

3. Red Cine-x and Rocket are to improves in all aspects was including stability. Thanks.

4. Scarlet screen. Beautiful, great resolution, big. Thanks

5. Scarlet file, Good high iso, a little smooth for my tastes but easily fixed. Thanks along with RED Gamma 3.

Wish List.

1. Please give us an option for a matte screen. Even with a shade, even with medum ambient light, turn and track the wrong way and you go from seeing the image to seeing your own reflection.

2. Autofocus. Don't need it all the time, not even most the time, but if their is a firmware fix to stop the hunting, please have RED address it. For some things autofocus can be brilliant, for others, well so far it's a manual focus camera.Not a big complaint, but a little help would do.

3. Nikon Mount. Maybe it's me, but I've got years of manually focusing Nikon Lenses in my brain and manually working a Canon lens just kind of throws me. I can do it, but I have to practice and try to remember each time.I have both large sets of Nikon and Canon Lenses and would rather go the Nikon route, especially the Zeiss as I love the sharpness.

3. Cine-X. Two needs, well make that three. The ability for real single channel corrections that are on sliders (see lightroom). The ability to get a quicktime movie that plays in quicktime 7 that matches cine X. I know this is an apple issue, but something is screwy with the gamma from Cinex to quicktime, (in any flavor). The ability to lightly vignette the files. Nothing drastic, but just enough to give that slight corner darkness or brightness.

4. This one is big. Some kind of locking mechanism or more stable sound inputs. Those mini plugs are a nightmare. I've bought all versions from straight out to L shaped and they just aren't secure and a slight move makes them pop. Anything to help in this regards will let me sleep a lot better at night.

5. Sound playback. Maybe I'm missing something, but to playback a clip and not hear sound is a heart stopper. There may be a function I've missed in the setup, but I can't find it and I've looked, test, tried, rinsed and repeat.

6. A quick start document. The RED operational guide is the only camera manual I've ever read and I've read it three times and it's kind of all over the place. I know this is a complicated and amazing device, but something that allows A user to pull out a sheet or two read through it and find an issue on setup would be golden. As you know, most of us start production tired due to heavy pre production and schedules.

I've become use to the Scarlet and most things are second nature, but sometimes a brain fart and oops, it's back to what was that setting I was looking for. It could be simple, just format, resolution, sound input and ouput, etc.

3) the RC-X team are really working hard, and are very responsive to bugs, issues etc.

Thanks for the wishlist:

1) I'll ask on matte screen.

2) Yup AF is tricky. I know a team is constantly working to improve this and that some AF lenses work better than others.

3) vignette is a lovely idea - I'll put that forwards. Gamma is a pain, and mostly afaik in Apple's court. Not sure what you mean on the single channel controls, pm me and I'll figure out what you're suggesting.

4) I'll ask the guys on this.

5) In the works as far as I know.

6) We're working hard on educational materials, and this is obviously one that should be done. I'll ask our education team.

Thanks for the info on the Nikon Mount. I'll inquire with my RED rep is there's a list, (whoa do I hate lists), but really thanks.

As far as RED user net, I kid about the fanboyism, but it does have a lot of resource, though I just don't have time to dig through it. Maybe it's my key wording, but we tried to find info on the scarlet sound playback in camera and never found anything substantial, though we gave it very little time, as for 5 weeks our crew has been sleeping about 5 hours a night tops and has done 4 countries in that period.

Graeme,

For single channel corrections, I really mean those little color squares in light-room with slider adjustments. They go red, orange, yellow, blue, cyan, magenta, etc. I know those aren't real rgb values, but it allows hue, luminance and saturation of each of those colors.

Case in point, on this gig, we had a lot of voice over from real subjects and rather than just run sound I we shot a portrait style on a white background, for an effect I want to do on the 4 videos. As these are subjects from around the world in virtually every ethnic lineage, they're are a lot of color changes in skin.

We had one scene with a very white western man next to a beautiful woman of African decent. The man had a magenta hue the woman slightly orange. This can be corrected in curves but is tricky and time consuming.

Go into light-room with a still image of faces and find that function with the color squares and you'll notice what I mean.

For vignetting, it sounds a like a trick (it is), but early on with digital video I would slightly vignette the piece. Most of us have locked in our head that film lenses and film cameras slightly degrade from the inside of the frame out and I played on this and made it work.

There are plugs for this, apple even has a vignetting setting, though most are kind of funky and don't look film like, more effect like. Light-room is good at this, but early on I did it in FCP using layered timelines and masks. I can't tell you the number of times clients, duping houses, people in our industry would say, "that's great did you shoot this super 16 or 35 and I'd say digital video and they'd say we know it's digital video now, but what format did you shoot on and I'd say "digital video". I'm convinced the vignettes plus the coloration and throwing slight focus gave them that impression.

As far as Scarlet sound playback. Sound is a monster, as you know. Even the most talented sound techs, in the most perfect room can drop the ball and when the issues is not caught quickly we have hell trying to fix it. I always (or nearly always run two computers with max digital red red rockets installed and with the Scarlet we have to pull the SSD run it through the computer and listen. With the Max digital case it runs a fan so we have to disable it to not interfere with the shooting and as you know running a 4k file without the RED rocket, even in the latest powerbooks, is somewhat slow and takes a while to spool up.

As you also know every minute of production time is costly and the sooner they fix the playback on the Scarlet the better my life will be.

As far as the mini jacks, I just find them very spotty. I would have loved real xlr inputs, or at least the R1's mini xlrs. they lock and are stable. If your team knows of any more substantial solution for this, please, please let us know. In fact I'm so aware of the mini inputs that a lot of time I'll run an R-1 for sound collection, not really as a visual B cam but just because it gives me a visual reference to pair the sound later and I know the R-1 inputs are safe.

One more note then I'll stop boring everyone, but for the first time we had a problem with one of our R-1's. I'm not blaming RED because that one body has been to hell and back and I got complacent and thought it was virtually indestructible. So stable that I left our second R-1 back in the studio, because we were carrying over 1000 pounds of equipment as it was and baggage overage in europe is a fright. Next time the second R-1 comes along. I could kick myself.

What happened was about mid way into the project we lost the ability to see changes on the monitor. WB, ISO, tint, etc. In fact to make the monitor look good we had to be a stop hot which we caught early on so we'd set the shot, set the camera and then go into cine-x for preview make corrections in cine-x and then set the camera to those settings.

Thank goodness for the raw file because until I caught this I had two sessions that were a stop hot and cine-x pulled them back and they look great.

I like the Scarlet, may grow to love it, (don't know yet), but if you can love a machine I love the RED Ones. I know them inside and out and I still think they shoot the most cinema graphic look of any digital camera I've owned, motion or still.

Sorry. One more suggestion. A hot shoe addition for all the cameras. I know that sounds silly, but we run a second camera mounted mike for sound scratch and sync and they're are times you want to mount a small led at the lens for just a slight fill. There are third party solutions, but if RED made one for the R-1 and specifically the Scarlet it would be in our kit the day it came out.

Thanks.

IMO

BC

P.S. I'm sorry, but one more thing. Why won't the Scarlet run a Phantom powered mic? I like Rodes, much better than seinhauser (sp?) and for a quick set up nothing works better or faster than one or two mics on stands out of frame pointed to the subject (as long as the subject isn't moving). Also powered mics are a pain as nobody remembers to turn them off, so every day, the batteries have to be changed. Seems like a small thing but as you know time is killer in production and anything that works, works fast is a godsend.

P.S. 2. This may sound like a list of complaints but it's not. As of "today" nobody makes a raw file camera at the price of the RED and though an added step in processing, is well worth the security. I'm convinced that RED has pushed the whole industry and without RED Sony or Canon wouldn't have dreamed of a raw file (my opinion).

People can say what they want about RED's raw file if it's really raw or not, but I know a stop over is not the plan (see my above note), but the ability to pull it back and make it look great is te=rememdous asset so thank the RED team.

Probably in the next build of firmware the scarlet might be able to adress phantom power.At least this was Jim´s answer from Redusers "Questions thread" (I agree, Reduser is another black hole of time):

snip

04-17-2012, 11:01 PM Originally Posted by Omar Al-Masab Is phantom power coming in the next build

Lack of audio playback is a real pain. Hopefully, that will be addressed and enabled soon in a firmware upgrade. They have indicated that a clean HD signal is right around the corner ... so that will make the Pix owners very happy ... and probably make Epic/Scarlet a real Alexa killer at their respective price-points.

Lack of audio playback is a real pain. Hopefully, that will be addressed and enabled soon in a firmware upgrade. They have indicated that a clean HD signal is right around the corner ... so that will make the Pix owners very happy ... and probably make Epic/Scarlet a real Alexa killer at their respective price-points.

There is little I can write that RED probably doesn't know.

The Scarlet is good, a little buggy, great file and like most digital video cameras somewhat complicated.

What I would love to see is the audio playback addressed quickly and much, much improved autofocus.

I say autofocus because the way advertising has changed. We're now in a world that's not just a linear narrative piece, video or stills, we're in a multimedia world where especially in lifestyle advertising camera and subject movement changes the look of a video from a snore to something exciting.

If your shooting locked down and tracking someone walking towards the camera, almost anyone can reasonably pull focus. If you want to rush the camera at the subjects, spin around them, catch an expression over a shoulder then that requires a very good focus puller (which is going to make the rig heavier) or you need reliable autofocus.

Recently everything we've shot is started with the RED1's and/or Scarlet for safety and to establish the scene, but 75% of the time I grab the Sony FS100 and set it for autofocus and image stabilization and make the image interesting. I'm probably as use to walking backwards as I am walking forward.

Now the reason I bring this up is I guess the Epic and Red One have targeted to the Alexa, (I wonder how many dp's buy a Alexa vs. Rent). but the Scarlet seems to be a Canon and Sony competitor. If the Scarlet would have some of the features of the present and new to come 4k Sony, I'd not have to consider another camera.

I am positive that in 3 weeks when we get into the editing booth with the client, the imagery they will go wow about won't be the most refined, it will be the most exciting.

The issue with Sony isn't the camera, it's the lens offerings and none of us know how they plan to process our 4k raw. Those things RED thought out a long time ago and a RED rocket, regardless of price changes the game when it comes to workflow.

The issue with all the camera makers is do they take their mid range scarlets, Sony FSes, Canons and make them a competitor for their own higher priced cameras. Will Sony let the 4k FS loose and make it a huge sales success, or will they hobble it to protect F3 sales?

In the last 2 years I've learned volumes about these cameras, files, workflow, pre production, production, etc. etc. etc. and my personal preference of file look is the R1with the MX sensor. To me RED got it right after a lot of trial and error. I love the look of the R1.

Then again when the rubber meets the road and time is compressed, the little FS 100 has a lot of smart features. Playback is a snap, real dual XLR connectors and the ability to mix sound take setting up and security of shooting a much easier and stable task.

Bottom line is in 5 years we'll see what happens. I assume Adobe with lightroom will find a way to give real professional color grading without workarounds. To me that will be the real leveler . . . maybe.

It's true that Red compeats with Arri, and at the same time the products are slightly different.

I'd like to develop that point a little if I may because I think we often tend to compare the 2 cameras.

Here in the high-end avert, the camera mainly used is the Alexa, way before the Red cameras, and still a lot more than we imagine: film; but I'll talk stricktly about digital so the Alexa.Each time I had the oportunity to ask, on a plateau or in private, why the Alexa and not the R1 or Epic ? the answer were not about film look (both have film look), or DR (both have wide DR) etc...The main reasons the Alexa haunts the advert and cine-teevee crew is because the incredible simplicity and reliability of its workflow, both on set and in post, and the other main reason is because all experienced operators are "at home" as they are trained on Arri since they were sucking pacifier.

Very very rarely the Alexa is used in Arriraw config. It's very costly and everybody prefers the LogC - Prores workflow. The post prod of Arri files is really simple, simplier than Red and doesn't need so much power or redrocket. So, the Alexa is generally prefered for that reason and it produces superb flat files right-out-the-box, no transcode, no debayer but direct (done internaly in the Arri). In fact in any situation where also high volume of footage is requiered and delays are short the Alexa wins.

As an example, I can edit with my now 3 years old workstation, Alexa's files quite comfortably, no prob, while the latest Red 6K anouncement, no way. And right now I don't have the Redrocket so I use a workflow with the Avid that works for me but based on proxies or based on AMA, sometimes a DPX workflow too if I don't edit in Avid but all that need re-link or transcode at one point or another. More manipulation.

Red gives however, IMHO, 2 main advantages. One is the possibility to crop (or reframe, it sounds better); and of course the other advantage is the latitude and flexibility that Raw is giving, this point doesn't need more explainations for being so obvious. I think it has been demostrate many times here in this forum in any forms and colors.

HD format has no room to crop and solutions are costly. So if youy operate an Alexa in non-raw, you have very little flexibility on that aspect.But if really short deadlines are required mixed with volume and high-quality R.O.T.B, the Alexa IMO still beats a Red system. Red on the other hand has the power and flexibility and price-friendly.

Both cameras produce beautifull footage and I think it's a question of priorities. They compeat, yes and no at the same time. I think both have found their niche-clients.The photographer, by its training, nature, budgets and mentality will without doubt be much more inclined towards Red cameras. The Alexa will attract more the video-cine crew (Red does too) but I doubt many photographers will join the Arri club. You could eventually use an Epic for stills but not an Alexa. The Red is more versatile, flexible, forgives much more mistakes, still photography friendly, and well priced.

I think that naturally, Red has a lot of potencial buyers within the photographic comunity (they are very aware of it) and the motion's of course; while Arri strictly targets motion crew.

The real Red competitors are going to be the Sony, Panas 4 or more Ks to come.

I also agree with James: it would be indeed highly desirable that we end to work within a sort of Lightroom or C1 for motion with advanced grading capabilities. It would also be great if we could end to have a standart RAW, although I doubt it will happen and I think that DNG in motion will end the same as DNG in still, a presumed standart that almost nobody applies.It would also be very nice if all motion capable cameras would feature thruth xlr, as mentionned, phantom power would not be a luxury and if they could apply the rule of one-button-one-function I'd be eternally thankfull. Plus, sensors that would allow multiformat or at least the capability to project the cropping lines wich is generally not the case.

What I would love to see is the audio playback addressed quickly and much, much improved autofocus.

The new camera firmware released last week supposedly contains. " ... New Autofocus Algorithms ..."

I haven't tried it yet, primarily because I shoot mostly manual focus Zeiss lenses. My only Canon autofocus capable lens is my Tokina 11-16. I do have a bunch of Nikon zooms and it will be interesting to see how (or if) autofocus works with them when that mount is released.

I think that most cinematographers are simply a decade behind us photographers in understanding the power of a raw file

As for cost - it would seem that on set costs could be reduced too !

IMO

S

Sam,

Believe it or not, RAW has little, if any advantage over Arri log for color grading. Both formats record the full range that the chip can image. When the white balance is set "close enough" in Arri log, color grading is quick and easy without having to fuss with the RAW converter.

There is also the issue of the color reproduction of the RedRAW. From my experience with red color and red color2, I have not been very happy. Perhaps red color 3 has fixed these issues, but it was not released in time for my last film. This is the main reason I hear from cinematographers for choosing Arri.